Tottenham linked with 11-goal Mainz midfielder for £7.5m

It’s been a quiet day for transfer news in Tottenham Hotspur land, but there was one that wormed its way out of the Bat Country peat. The Mirror is suggesting that Spurs are tracking Turkish midfielder Yunus Malli, currently at Bundesliga side Mainz.

Malli did score 11 goals and notch four assists for Mainz last season in just under 3000 minutes. That’s decent however last season was easily his best production at Mainz. Most of his minutes came at the #10 position, though he is able to play on the flanks.

Here’s a bit of what he can do.

So that video isn’t too bad. He’s got a nice looking shot and knows how to get past (admittedly bad) Bundesliga back lines. He looks like a perfectly decent, young (-ish) midfielder. Spurs have been nominally linked with Malli off and on for a while now; Vince wrote about him in the Hoddle on at least two occasions as early as last November. We dubbed it ridiculous back then. It’s still kind of a weird rumor.

As with most of these kinds of stories, I don’t doubt that Malli’s name might be on a list somewhere at Hotspur Way, but the genesis of this rumor appears to be the fact that he has a £7.5m release clause in his contract that expires at the end of the month. That, combined with his previous links to Tottenham and Pochettino’s suggestion that Spurs are still in the market for more players.

In today’s market, £7.5m is stupid cheap. If Malli, who’s now 24, is content to come to the Premier League and be a rotation option, then that’s one thing. Maybe he’s worth a flyer, I dunno. But I’m not holding my breath. Even with the imminent departure of Alex Pritchard, Spurs still have a glut of attacking midfielders that can play in the hole and out wide. Add in the imminent signing of Georges-Kevin N’Koudou and the youth players like Marcus Edwards and Josh Onomah, and this rumor doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.